The colleges that I’m applying to recommend a rigorous senior year schedule in order to have a better chance for admission. Can someone tell me if my schedule would be considered ‘rigorous’?
I hadn’t taken any AP classes prior to senior year. I did take an honors class (Honors Chem) in 10th grade. I am technically a year ahead in math (Geometry 9th grade, Alg 2 10th grade, Precalc 11th grade) and I was a year ahead in LA (10th grade LA in 9th grade, 11th grade LA in 10th grade, 12th grade LA in 11th grade). My school doesn’t offer a million AP’s, just a few history ones, plus AP Stats, Calc, Physics, Psych, Lit, Comp, etc. I am planning on going into Engineering so that’s why I’m taking the physics and calc classes.
Colleges assess rigor based on what’s available at your school. The more “elite” a college is, the more they may scrutinize your choice of classes.
For most colleges, it just matters that you took reasonably hard classes and/or had reasons for why you took class A rather than class B if it looks like you took an easy class. Each college usually posts a recommended set of classes on their website or in their Common Data Set (CDS section C5).
The CDS (section C7) will also tell how much weight the college gives to various things such as GPA, SAT scores, and rigor of class schedule. However you have to read that in context.
As an example, Lewis & Clark College says rigor is “very important.” But L & C admits almost two thirds of applicants, only recommends 2 years of foreign language, etc., and while I think it’s a great school, I think the schedule of the average good high school student would be acceptably rigorous, while Harvard might define “rigor” somewhat differently.
So in the end, the definition of “sufficiently rigorous” depends on what’s available at your high school and what colleges you are applying to.
I just applied to Michigan State University today. I plan on applying to U of M, University of Florida, and Michigan Tech. I have a safety in place and I’m still researching a few more OOS colleges to apply to
